Energy saving and environmental protection has become a new topic being faced by and studied by the world, which has triggered the global lighting revolution and LED lighting. In 2010, one after another, countries from Europe and North America introduced provisions to gradually phase out incandescent lamps. China will ban the use of incandescent lamps in 2010, and LED will become the primary source of lighting. By using LED light sources to replace traditional light sources, a first energy saving can be achieved; with the introduction of smart lighting, a second energy saving as well as the transformation in lighting management by using LED can be realized on top of the first energy saving.
The core concepts of smart lighting include perception, interconnection, physical integration and intelligence. To reflect the advantages of smart lighting, there must be a lighting terminal that is responsive, feature-rich, safe, and reliable. A lighting terminal in an LED smart lighting system consists of the LED light source, LED driver and dimming controller. The dimming controller controls the LED driver by outputting PWM signals or 0-10 V analog signals. The LED driver outputs current at different levels to the LED light source based on the dimming signal, thereby causing the LED to generate lights at different brightness.
The DALI (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) protocol is an internationally used open standard in the lighting field. Advantages of the DALI protocol include high energy efficiency, a flexible structure, easy maintenance, and powerful functions, while the dimming system based on the DALI protocol also has very good scalability. Therefore, the DALI protocol is very popular in Europe and the United States, and more and more manufacturers begin to manufacture a variety of lighting devices that are compatible with the DALI protocol.
However, dimming device interfaces from prior art are typically designed to receive only DALI signals or 0-10 V analog signals, and cannot be compatible with both control signals at the same time. This has raised the cost of dimming controllers and caused inconvenience to users.
The prior art also includes a dimming device which can receive both DALI control signals and 0-10 V analog control signals; however, these two different kinds of control signal are received by the dimming device through different signal input terminals. Although this has allowed the dimming device to realize more functionalities, but the requirement to use multiple signal input terminal to input dimming signals still leads to a higher cost of components.
Therefore, it is necessary to provide a solution to solve at least one of the problems described above.